The Boys from County Hell

 That Bram Stoker based Dracula on Vlad III, the Impaler, is a relatively modern theory - it arose in the 1950s. The man never really said much about it; Scholars who have studied his notes found that he made up many of the details, and never really knew much about the Wallachian Wanker (as I'm sure he was known in his time [citation needed]).

 There's a newer theory that Stoker actually based his most famous monster on a legend from his own country - Abhartach, 'the dwarf', a cruel tyrant/wizard (the worst type of tyrant) that kept coming back from the grave and, in some tellings, gorged on people's blood.

 The Boys from County Hell, a 2021 Irish horror comedy runs with that. It's set in a fictional town (based on the actual site where Abhartach is said to rest) where Stoker once stayed a night and overheard the story. The locals milk it as much as possible, of course; the local pub is called The Stoker, and the locals have a bit of fun with the meagre few tourists that come for that tidbit of folklore. There's not a lot else to do in that particular corner of the Irish backcountry.

 Jack (Eugene Rowan), our protagonist, is keenly aware of that. He's a slacker in his early twenties with no prospects and no illusions. He mostly hangs out in the pub with his mates - William (Fra Free), Claire (Louisa Harland) and SP (Michael Hough) and whiles away his time as others make plans and move on with their lives.

 Things sour when, while drunkenly crossing a field one night, they're a victim of a random boar attack and William dies against the Abhartach's cairn. As Jack watches horrified, the ground thirstily drinks up his friend's blood.

 But.. that's actually kind of unrelated to the plot. Things kick off a little later when Jack's father (Nigel O'Neill) enlists him and his surviving mates to help him build a road that needs to go right through... you guessed it, the evil dwarf's cairn. No self-respecting evil tyrant wizard is ever going to stand for that; there are some random detours in the way, but things do end up with a suitably epic (well, epic on a budget) vampire attack on the sleepy backwater town.

 There is a lot of this movie that just works; The landscapes are beautiful, the film-making assured, all the actors are great and have plenty of great lines. The monster is excellent and has a truly badass way of draining blood (none of that fang malarkey for The Dwarf!).
 Unfortunately the film is let down by a script that never really coheres its disparate elements into a compelling story. There are false starts, a whole sideplot which feels like it should be integral to the story but ends up feeling like a red herring... it doesn't feel like the movie ever figured out what to do with its plot elements. There's also the fact that the movie acts like it's a comedy but doesn't have that many jokes to back it up; This last one is honestly not much of a problem - I prefer this tone, which is a little more, say, American Werewolf in London than Shaun of the Dead - but there's something in the balance that just feels off.

 It's a shame that it's a bit of a mess, but director/co-writer Chris Baugh and his co-conspirators have fashioned a very likeable mess, one that's over and done in a brisk, enjoyable ninety minutes and does manage to get some pretty funny jokes in. It might be a bit less than the sum of its parts, but there are some very good parts here.
 My favorite: When the Abhartach finally surfaces, instead of his hand coming out of the ground, we see his foot. That might seem like a bit of absurdist humor, but no: to prevent the monster from coming back, the ancient chieftains that fought him had to bury him upside down. Folklore humor!